Age of Adepts

Five shredders waved their chainsaws and metal fists under the control of the goblins. They charged towards the strange bugs with their heavy footsteps.

This scorpion had acted reckless and fearless until this point. Yet, the moment it saw several metal freaks charging towards it with steam blasting everywhere, it turned into a sly fox and started hiding throughout the lumber mill.

The piles of lumber had now become its best cover.

Compared to the shredders, the bug was no bigger than their rectangular feet. Regardless of how resilient its life force was, or how hard its shell, being stepped on by such a colossal being would mean an overwhelming weight of forty tons.

That was why the insect relied on the logs scattered across the camp to rush everywhere. It occasionally launched rapid assaults at the troll slaves and goblin guards who couldn’t dodge in time.

It quickly threw the lumber mill camp into disorder.

All the troll slaves were lowering their heads and scattering. Some didn’t watch where they were going and ran straight into the insect. Naturally, it slaughtered them. Some brought themselves into the path of a shredder’s charge, where it would reduce them to meat paste in a short yet tragic scream.

Uldum and the troop of guards by his side had their formation disrupted by the slaves that were running everywhere. They could not keep up with the insect’s agile and lithe body.

”All goblins, do not panic,” Uldum was the camp commander after all. He was calmer than the other goblins, even at this moment. He climbed onto a tall log and shouted from above, ”All goblin guards get on top of a log. You, you, and you; don’t run about with your shredders. Guard the entrances of the camp. All slaves gather in their rooms. Anyone else who runs about randomly will be beaten to death.”

The previously chaotic camp immediately found its backbone under Uldum’s command. All the slaves and goblin guards hurried to their posts according to his instructions. The five shredders no longer chased futilely behind the insect. Instead, they retreated to the entrances between the logs and stared eagerly at the bug, as if they were waiting for it to fall into their trap.

The sting scorpion stopped between two piles of lumber. It raised its head as if listening to something.

Soon, it changed its strategy. It charged out of the pile of logs and moved atop the stacks of wooden boxes in the center of the camp.

Baited by the scorpion, two goblin shredders charged into the pile and cut everything into pieces with their chainsaws. They cut the logs, splinters flying everywhere. The big wooden crates fell all over the place. They crashed to the ground, and their contents scattered everywhere.

They were strange crystal prisms about half a meter long. The insides of these crystals weren’t solid. Instead, they were filled with an odd liquid that radiated a ghostly green light.

For some reason, even though Billis couldn’t sense any elementium aura from these crystals, he felt his heart tremble.

He had a sudden feeling that the most significant objects in that camp for him might not be the five goblin shredders. It wasn’t the fire-spitting sticks in the goblin’s hands either. It was these mysterious crystal prisms.

Under his command, the sting scorpion conjured yet another obscuring cloud of dust. It then dove underground and emerged next to the scattered crate of crystal prisms.

”Fire! Fire!” Uldum’s sharp and severe roar rang out once again, ”We can’t let the monster get close to the magic energy batteries. Hurry up and fire.”

His shout prompted all the goblin guards standing atop the piles of lumber to raise their guns and fire at the sting scorpion. The rain of metal bullets crashed against the shell of the sting scorpion. However, most of them were deflected.

Still, several columns of purple and black blood leaked out of the scorpion. Many of the compound eyes at its head had been blinded.

A sharp and sorrowful scream rang out in the camp. The goblins all clasped their ears and rolled around in agony wherever the terrifying soundwave echoed. Even the goblin mechanics in the shredders were no exception!

Billis, who had been watching from a distance, was slightly stunned. He then seemed to have understood something.

In all honesty, Billis was utterly shaken when he first saw those five goblin shredders.

The sensitivity of his Spirit allowed him to sense that each of these goblin shredders was as powerful as an advanced apprentice. However, this place only seemed to be a comparatively rural town of the Goblin Empire.

The cylinder stick that fired metal bullets, in the hands of the goblin guards, had a basic damage that reached thirty points of power. Such strength might not be much to adepts, but if every single low-level goblin of the Empire had access to such a convenient and rapid method of attack, Billis had no choice but to reevaluate the overall strength of the Goblin Empire.

If even this place could easily pull five advanced apprentices together, and if every single goblin had the offensive power of a beginner apprentice, this would be bad news for the upcoming invasion of the adepts.

However, good news always accompanied bad, regardless of the matter!

Even though the combat training and offensive strength of these goblins surprised him, the sting scorpion’s scream of agony had also exposed the weakness of these goblins.

The goblins’ strength and power all came from this strange equipment, and their inherent power was so insignificant that it wasn’t even worth mentioning.

The soundwave that the sting scorpion had let out in agony was no more than fifteen points in strength, but the goblins were already collapsing left and right. It clearly demonstrated that the strength of their bodies was even weaker than a beginner apprentice. The basic statistics of their Physique and Spirit had to be extremely low.

The injured scorpion conjured another cloud of dust while the goblins were dazed. It dove underground and didn’t appear again.

The dizzy goblins took a long while to recover. They immediately organized their manpower to search the entire camp. However, they found no tracks or signs of the insect. With no choice left to them, they gave up on their search and started to restore the order of the lumber mill camp.

The entire camp had turned into a muddy mess. The charging shredders had broken many logs, and numerous crates had split into pieces. Consequently, as they were cleaning up everything, no goblin realized that two of the crystal prisms had gone missing.

…………

While the goblins were pouring out of the camp to search the forest, Billis had already returned to the depths of the woods, only leaving behind one or two insects to spy around the camp.

Billis found a hidden cave in the forest and immediately started researching the two strange items he had just obtained.

Magic energy batteries?

These two odd little things were called magic energy batteries?

Judging by their names, they seemed to be strange energy crystals that could provide certain facilities with mysterious non-elementium energy. Billis was already shocked beyond belief when he had seen a weak goblin easily manipulating a metallic golem twenty times its size as if it was its own body.

What shocked him the most at that moment was the energy that had been used to power those hulking monstrosities. After all, he hadn’t sensed any elementium energy on those machines.

But now, after obtaining the two magic energy batteries, and sensing the strange energy frequency within them, Billis had a vague feeling that these so-called magical energy batteries had powered those shredders.

However, he lacked an alchemical lab here. He also possessed minimal knowledge about alchemy as well. That was why trying to expose the unique system of the goblins through these two magic energy batteries was beyond the limits of Billis’ abilities.

Billis had no choice but to cast his attention to the goblin camp and attempt to find more comprehensive information there.

However, what Billis didn’t know was that a goblin helicopter had suddenly taken to the skies while he hid in the cave to research the batteries. The helicopter raced into the distance under cover of night.

The battle during the day had caught Commander Uldum by total surprise and left him with no valuable information or clues. However, when combined with the information brought back by Old Pa Tok, Uldum had more than enough reason to suspect that the insect that had attacked today was most likely the fangs of an otherworldly intruder.

That was why Uldum personally wrote a letter requesting reinforcements after having more guards stationed at the lumber mill camp. He then had Old Pa Tok send the message to General Buzzek of the Seventh Goblin Land Corps.

In the letter, Uldum used skin-crawling language to describe in detail the horror of the otherworldly intruder. He once again mentioned how weak the defenses of Beta Town were.

As Old Tok left the camp with Flying Apprentice Mosaldin, Commander Uldum stood by a wooden window of the second floor, gazing into the deathly silence of the nighttime forest. Indescribable terror and worry filled his heart.

A forest like this one could not possibly be ordinary!

Under normal circumstances, large numbers of wild beasts and monsters would appear around the camp once night fell. Even after the goblin guards placed plenty of torches around the camp, they still couldn’t stop these creatures from circling outside the camp.

However, today, the forest in the night betrayed a silence like death.

It was almost as if countless terrifying demons hid in the darkness where their vision couldn’t reach, and these demons were the ones who slaughtered or scared away the forest beasts.

That meant the insect from earlier hadn’t gone too far away. It was still spying on them from outside. If the goblin guards relaxed, or an opening in the camp’s perimeter appeared, then the insect was sure to visit again, wreaking havoc upon the camp.

As for the opponent’s goal? Commander Uldum had absolutely no idea, even after mulling over it for half a day.